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Earth as Art – From Near (Inside a Stone) and Far (the Space Station)

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Earth as Art – From Near (Inside a Stone) and Far (the Space Station)

By Andrew C. Revkin June 26, 2015 5:36 pmJune 26, 2015 5:36 pm

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who is 91 days into a yearlong mission as commander of the International Space Station, has been posting strings of photographs of our remarkable planet on Twitter using the hashtags #EarthArt and #YearInSpace. Here are a few examples from earlier in June:

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Scott Kelly, a NASA astronaut on a yearlong Space Station mission, has been posting images of Earth on Twitter using the hashtag #EarthArt.Credit Scott Kelly/ NASA

On June 22, Commander Kelly, posting an image of a meandering river, said, “[It’s] interesting how meaningless squiggles are until they stand for something else.”

#EarthArt Interesting how meaningless squiggles are until they stand for something else. #YearInSpace http://t.co/VvrHbPWfyT

Exploring his output earlier this week, I was struck by how much the images, framed intentionally as abstractions, reminded me of a much more close-focus look at Earth — the spellbinding mineral macrophotography of Bill Atkinson, who’s best known as one of the pioneering programmers behind the Macintosh computer.

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A closeup photograph of a polished section of Dali stone, a form of marble from China's Yunnan province, from "Within the Stone," a book by Bill Atkinson.Credit Bill Atkinson

I wrote about a couple of the images in 2008. Below you can see a 1.8-inch cross section of pietersite quartz, followed by my little riff from the book, which centers on how time scales shape perceptions of what’s going on around us.

In the photograph, I saw the eternal battle between water and rock, which rock seems to win at any given moment as you watch waves break on a coast. But just wait awhile.

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A 1.8-inch cross section of a piece of pietersite quartz, from "Within the Stone," a book of photographs by Bill Atkinson.Credit Bill Atkinson

Here’s my haiku:

We tend to recognize and give weight to agents of change mainly if they operate within our frame of reference, an attention span calibrated to the rhythms of human life—to hours and days, maybe years, rarely decades.

Waves are no such thing. They are fed by forces as near perpetual as the sun’s rays and the Earth’s spin. They know nothing of time, despite their metronomic manner. They roll until impeded.

It is the waves that break when surging seas collide with rocky shores. Thus is born the impression that water is weak and rock a bastion. But it is the human eye, of course, that is weak. Handicapped, really. Shortsighted in the most profound way.

We need to realize that we’re all on this crowded world together. We are stewards of a precious ‘pale blue dot’ in a vast cosmos – a planet with a future measured in billions of years, whose fate depends on humanity’s collective actions. We must urge greater priority for long-term global issues on the political agenda. And our institutions must prioritize projects that are long-term in a political perspective, even if a mere instant in the history of our planet.

We need to broaden our sympathies in both space and time and perceive ourselves as part of a long heritage, and stewards for an immense future.

About

By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.